Concepts

The ideas behind Modular Computers. You can build and program a computer without reading these pages, but each one explains something you will meet sooner or later, and why the mod works that way.

Modular Computers is built on how real computers and real Linux work. Where it copies them, these pages say so; where it takes a shortcut, they say that too.

• The bus: how a computer sees its parts, cards and cabled blocks, and why a device can be on only one computer at a time.
• Faces: how a program names a side of a block, by the world’s names or by the block’s front.
• Power: what draws power, what stores it, and how watts are shown.
• Interrupts: how a computer waits for a key, a frame or a sound without checking again and again.
• Names: why one device answers to a slot path, an id and sometimes a virtual name.
• Persistence: how a running computer survives a save, a restart and an unloaded chunk, and what a budget means.